


Conversation Hearts

by JessBakesCakes



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Canon Compliant, Except they just don't know it yet, F/M, Idiots in Love, Pre-Canon, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:42:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29429745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessBakesCakes/pseuds/JessBakesCakes
Summary: Josh looks around the small diner they’ve found themselves in somewhere just outside of Greenville, South Carolina, taking in the fading red and pink decor that’s been haphazardly tacked and taped to the walls and windows. Admittedly, he’d forgotten about Valentine’s Day - they all had other priorities these days.Or, Bartlet for America era Josh/Donna on Valentine's Day.
Relationships: Josh Lyman/Donna Moss
Comments: 28
Kudos: 81





	Conversation Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Valentine's Day, friends! I set out to write a Valentine's Day story that was much different than this, but somehow this is where we ended up. Thank you to my tumblr friends who listen to me yell about Josh/Donna all day - you're all gems of humans. I should be updating Almost Honest this week, so hang in there for that! Thanks to all of you for reading!

**Greenville, South Carolina | February 14, 1998**

“What’s with the hearts?”

Donna adds a packet of sugar to her coffee before looking up at him. “Huh?”

“The hearts,” Josh says, motioning across the table toward Donna. She’s wearing a cream-colored cardigan covered in small red hearts over a red blouse, and her hair is pulled back to show off earrings that look like conversation heart candies. “You’re wearing... hearts.”

“It’s Valentine’s Day, Josh,” Donna says. “I’m hardly the only one.”

Josh looks around the small diner they’ve found themselves in somewhere just outside of Greenville, South Carolina, taking in the fading red and pink decor that’s been haphazardly tacked and taped to the walls and windows. Admittedly, he’d forgotten about Valentine’s Day - they all had other priorities these days. 

His meeting with the Greenville County Democratic Party was canceled at the last minute, and somehow Donna managed to convince him to have breakfast with her in lieu of heading back to the hotel to prep for the next stop on their trip through the Southeastern US. 

Donna has managed to convince him to do a staggering amount of things in her short tenure as his assistant, including hiring her in the first place. She’s surprisingly persuasive, in a gentle way. She has this way of pushing him in a different direction that almost makes him feel like it was his idea all along. It would be unsettling if it wasn’t so… endearing. 

“I didn’t think someone newly unattached such as yourself would be so…” he trails off, searching for the right word to complete his thought. 

“Festive?” she finishes.

“Yeah.”

“What, since I’m unattached I’m not allowed to be festive?” 

“No, I just thought that since you were unattached you’d be bound by the bonds of the sisterhood today,” Josh says. 

Donna plays with the edge of her napkin, rolling and unrolling it between her fingers. “The sisterhood?”

“You know, the ‘I don’t need a man to define me, someone can show me they love me 364 other days of the year, Valentine’s Day is created by corporations to sell hearts and chocolate,’ that sort of thing,” Josh explains. “You and your friends sit and drink wine and talk about how much you hate men. And the holiday itself.”

Donna shrugs. “Well, I _don’t_ need a man to define me, someone _can_ show me they love me 364 other days of the year, and Valentine’s Day _is_ certainly one of the most corporate holidays out there.”

“But?”

“But I also like getting flowers and chocolate. And I definitely like being adored.” 

She smiles when she says the last part. It’s a smile he hasn’t seen from her before - bright and clear, almost radiating sunshine. And it’s contagious because he reflexively smiles back at her. 

Their breakfast arrives and Josh moves his newspaper out of the way before digging in. He spears a sausage link with his fork when he hears her voice above the ambient noise of dishes being cleared behind him. 

“What about you? Are you… _attached?_ ”

Josh looks up at her. He watches as she carefully drizzles syrup on her stack of pancakes, avoiding eye contact with him when she asks. Josh can’t help but feel like there’s subtext there, somewhere buried in the words of her question. 

He wonders if this conversation is crossing a line. These are just this side of ‘first date questions’ they’re asking each other, and he’s only known her for three days. Then again, he’d barely known her for three minutes before he found out all about Donna’s ex, their breakup, and her desire to start fresh by joining the campaign. After a moment he decides that it’s only fair that she knows some things about him too. 

“On again, off-again thing. We’re uh…”

“Currently off again,” Donna supplies, taking a sip of her coffee. 

“How’d you know?”

“You’re not the only one who can read people, Josh,” Donna shrugs. 

She eats all of her eggs first before moving on to her sausage, then finally the pancakes. He wonders if she does this all the time, or if she has other quirky food habits he doesn’t know about yet. 

Donna asks him about polling numbers in Minnesota, or Montana, or… was it Michigan? Massachusetts? He’s a little off his game this morning. She all but dragged him into the diner as he rattled off a list of the dozens of things he could be doing while eating continental breakfast at the hotel, and now he’s forgotten most of them. 

They must not have been that important, anyway. 

By the time he rejoins her in the conversation, she’s talking about politicians who become politicians for the promise of power and attention. 

“That’s not why I got into politics,” Josh says, quickly. 

“Well, then, why did you get into politics?” she asks. “And don’t give me a smarmy answer.”

“A smarmy answer?” he laughs. 

“Don’t give me a politician’s answer. I want a ‘Josh Lyman, regular citizen’ answer.”

He’s not sure where the ‘Josh Lyman, politician’ answer ends and the ‘Josh Lyman, citizen’ answer begins, but he senses that this is important to her. He chews on a piece of bacon as she watches him, waiting for him to respond. 

He downs the bacon with the rest of his second cup of coffee before he begins. “The thing is, I want something I’m doing to have mattered when I’m gone. I don’t want to be the… President, or the Senator, or… whoever. I don’t want to be the guy. I want to be the guy that the guy counts on. I was Chief of Staff for Earl Brennan, I was the Democratic Legislative Director for the House. I was Floor Director for the Senate. I even worked for Hoynes for a little while. But then Leo told me I should go listen to the Governor speak. And I’ll be damned if Leo didn’t know that I needed to be a part of it. I know the real thing when I see it, just like Leo does. And I want to be a part of the real thing. To make a real difference.”

She takes a sip of coffee, seemingly processing his answer. He notices that she’s drinking out of the same spot each time, keeping the stain from her lipstick centralized on the mug. 

“Was that too smarmy?” Josh asks, unable to bear the silence anymore. 

She smiles again, the same warm smile as before. “An appropriate ratio of smarmy and sincere.”

He feels like he can breathe again when she says this. He’s not entirely sure if he was even holding his breath to begin with, but the relief that washes over him when she says this catches him off guard. 

“Leaning toward the sincere end of the spectrum, I hope?” He surprises himself with how earnest he sounds when he asks. 

“Well, if your original answer didn’t do it, that question did,” Donna laughs. 

“My mother’s guilted me enough times to let it go to my head, I guess.”

Their coffee is refilled and Donna prepares another cup for herself. One cream, one sugar, then another cream, and another sugar. “She called you yesterday, by the way.”

“My mother called?” Josh asks.

“She did,” Donna confirms. “It wasn’t urgent. I didn’t want to tell you yesterday when you were having your nutty with CJ and Sam. She’s a really nice lady.”

Josh drops his napkin on his now empty plate. “You talked to my mother?”

“I answered your phone, Josh. I took the message and then as I was wrapping up, it seemed like she just wanted to chat. What was I supposed to do, hang up on her?”

He runs his hand through his hair, confident that he will never hear the end of it from his mother about Donna. He can practically hear her voice. _She’s just darling, Joshua, I adore her_. 

It’s not the worst thing that could happen, he decides. “How long did you talk to her?”

“About ten minutes,” Donna shrugs. “Fifteen, maybe.”

Josh’s mind races. What could she have possibly said to Donna? He begins filing through the embarrassing stories that his mother trots out at funerals and weddings, internally doing damage control and attempting to figure out what he can do to recover from this. 

It’s almost like Donna can see the change in his body language because she quickly continues. “Josh, it’s fine,” Donna insists. “She was perfectly nice. We had a wonderful conversation about the campaign and Governor Bartlet. She talked a little about you, and then that was it.”

“Yeah, it’s that ‘talked a little about me’ part I’m worried about,” he grumbles. 

“She’s just being supportive,” Donna says, attempting to smooth things over. “She was telling me about how excited she is to vote for Governor Bartlet knowing you will have worked to help get him elected. She seemed… proud.”

Josh softens a bit at the sweetness in Donna’s voice when she says that. She’s not teasing him the way that she does at the campaign headquarters, or on the bus. 

“My family’s mostly Republican,” Donna continues. 

“My condolences,” Josh offers.

“My dad’s a Republican. My sisters are Republicans. My brother can go either way but usually leans Republican. My mom is the only Democrat in the entire family, really, besides me. And even she has some pretty backward views on things sometimes.”

“Well,” Josh says. “It seems like it's not just the love affair with cheese that drove you away from Wisconsin, then.”

Donna ignores this. “They weren’t thrilled that I joined the campaign. Thankfully I have three siblings so my parents can focus their energy on them. Otherwise, it would be just me to shoulder the crushing weight of their expectations,” she says. “Do you have any siblings?”

Josh swallows his coffee, carefully considering the best way to answer her question. Whenever people found out about Joanie, they always started to act strangely around him. Their breakfast has been pleasant — nice, even — and he doesn’t want to ruin it. But she’s been pretty open with him. So he makes the effort to reciprocate. 

“I had an older sister,” Josh says. “She died when I was a kid.” He decides that the details aren’t necessary; it’s difficult enough to string the words together that are necessary to form the sentence he just uttered. 

“Oh, Josh. I’m so sorry. I… don’t know what to say.” When she says it, it’s not saccharine sweet. It’s refreshingly honest. He’s heard enough of the words ‘I’m sorry’ to last him six lifetimes, but when she says it, it feels honest. It doesn’t feel insincere or automatic. It feels genuine. 

“Not much to say, really,” Josh shrugs. 

“I didn’t mean to pry.”

“You didn’t. We were just talking.”

“I’m actually kind of… honored that you trusted me with that information,” Donna says. “We haven’t been working together that long.”

“Well, you told me about Dr. Freeride. It’s only fair,” Josh deflects with a laugh. 

“You read me like a book,” Donna continues. “I didn’t exactly volunteer that piece of information.”

Josh watches as Donna twists her napkin into a line of knots, pulling it tighter and tighter until she tears the napkin in half. 

“And didn’t have to confirm or deny anything. But you did. So.” 

“Well, thank you,” she says. “For sharing.”

They slide easily into a conversation about the better parts of their childhoods. Josh tells her about the dog he brought home with him one day in elementary school who lived to see Josh’s first year in law school. He tells her about summers on Cape Cod and about Mets games with his dad before gently ribbing her about her childhood in Wisconsin. Turns out Donna took figure skating lessons for six years but stopped when it got too competitive. Her dad is Irish and her mom is Italian. Her full name is Donnatella _._

_Donnatella._ She seems embarrassed when she says it, but he can’t understand why. 

She’s the youngest of four kids. She was actually born in Minnesota and lived there before she moved to Wisconsin, but she doesn’t remember much about Minnesota. She was also an _alleged_ three-time state spelling bee champion. 

“I’m serious, Donna,” Josh says. “We’re having a serious conversation.”

“I’m also serious, Josh,” she laughs. 

“You’re clearly not serious if you think I’m going to believe —”

“That I won the state spelling bee three years in a row? Why is that so hard to believe?”

Josh’s cell phone rings, interrupting their conversation. “We’re going to finish this in a minute, Donnatella Moss. Don’t think I’m going to let you get away with this egregious dishonesty.”

Donna’s face turns red, but there’s that smile again. He could get used to this - this banter, this smile, this easy flirtatious back and forth that seems to feel natural. 

“Yeah?” Josh answers into the phone, holding up his index finger as if to tell her to hold on. He watches her as she looks down at her hands in her lap, still grinning. 

“Where the hell are you two?” Leo bellows into the phone. “We’re leaving in ten minutes!”

Josh pulls the phone away from his ear and checks his watch. He and Donna had been sitting and talking for nearly two and a half hours. Neither of them had even bothered to keep track. 

He tucks the phone between his shoulder and his ear, pulling his wallet out from his pocket and dropping some bills onto the table. “Relax, Leo, Donna already got our stuff on the bus and checked us out of our rooms. We’ll be on the bus before it pulls out.”

“You’d better be, or so help me god…”

“We’re on our way,” Josh says, hanging up the phone before turning his attention to Donna. 

“What’s wrong?” Donna asks, the concern evident in her voice. 

“It’s almost 10:00. We’ve been here for like two hours.” Josh grabs his coat and puts it on. 

“Seriously?” Donna squeaks, sliding out of the booth. “We were just talking. It didn’t feel like two hours.”

“No, it didn’t,” Josh agrees. He’s not so sure how time got away from them, but he can see why it did. It’s been a long time since he connected with someone so easily. Hours ago he followed Donna down the sidewalk and into the diner as she insisted that he would enjoy his breakfast, his mind whirring with anxiety about all of the things he could be doing instead. But at that moment, he can't think of a better way to have spent two hours.

“Josh, I didn’t mean to keep you. I’m so…”

“It’s fine,” Josh reassures her. “But we gotta make it to the bus in five minutes, so be ready to walk faster than you’ve ever walked in your entire life.”

They head toward the door before Donna stops in her tracks. “Wait, let me give you money for my half of the meal.”

“We don’t have time for the fake fighting over the check routine,” Josh says. “Seriously. It’s on me.”

“Let me at least pay the tip,” Donna answers, opening her purse and pulling out her wallet. “We took up a table for two hours that she could have turned over.”

“Donnatella,” Josh says, watching her flush again with the use of her full name. “I’m an excellent tipper.”

“Seriously, Joshua. You...”

He can’t help but grin when she calls him that. He doesn't even hear the rest of her sentence. Josh opens the door to the diner and places his hand on the small of Donna’s back, gently pushing her through. “Donna, _go_ ,” he laughs.

“Fine. But next time I’m going to order the fanciest, most expensive thing on the menu if you’re paying,” Donna teases. 

Josh walks with Donna down the sidewalk, hand still pressed to her back as they hurry toward the bus. The idea of another day that gets away from them, lost in conversation and contentment, could keep him going for weeks. 

_Next time._


End file.
